Chevron seeks email logs in Ecuador lawsuit

A Chevron gas station in San Rafael, Calif. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

SAN FRANCISCO - As part of a long-running lawsuit in Ecuador, Chevron Corp. has sent subpoenas to Google, Microsoft and Yahoo seeking email logs and computer usage data for 101 email addresses, at least one of which belongs to someone not involved in the case.

The subpoenas, served this month, are Chevron's latest effort to prove that a $19 billion judgment against the oil company in Ecuador was the result of fraud. An Ecuadoran judge last year ruled that Chevron should pay to clean up a portion of the Amazon rain forest where Texaco, bought by Chevron in 2001, used to drill for crude.

Chevron has demanded that the three Internet companies turn over nine years' worth of detailed online information involving the email addresses of people who traded messages with the legal team suing Chevron.

The opposing lawyers, however, insist that some of the addresses belong to former interns no longer working on the case. Other addresses belong to people who have expressed an interest in the lawsuit but were never involved in it, said Karen Hinton, spokeswoman for the lawyers suing Chevron.

"It is clear that Chevron is engaged in a coordinated scheme to invade the privacy of dozens of people who have tried to hold the company accountable for environmental crimes, or who just simply wanted information about the case," she said.

The latter category includes an Australian law professor and blogger who has been critical of Chevron's handling of the lawsuit. Kevin Jon Heller, a senior lecturer at Melbourne Law School, insists that he was never involved in the case and traded only two emails with one of the plaintiffs' lawyers, Steven Donziger.

"Tactics like this need to be exposed and resisted, no matter who uses them or whom they target," Heller wrote in a post on the blog Opinio Juris.

Heller contacted the American Civil Liberties Union, which then called Chevron's lawyers at the firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. After several discussions, Chevron dropped its request for his data.

Chevron spokesman Kent Robertson said the company is trying to find out whether some of the email addresses actually belong to key figures in the case, including the opposing side's lawyers and a court-appointed expert whom Chevron accuses of fraud. Some of the participants, he said, have set up multiple email accounts, and tracing the communication among them could help the company prove its contention that the lawsuit is nothing more than an elaborate extortion scheme.

In Heller's case, Chevron dropped its demand for his information once the company was satisfied that his Gmail address was indeed his and that he had no involvement in the case.

Chevron has already persuaded several U.S. judges to give it access to many of the opposing lawyers' emails, memos - and even Donziger's own journal. The company also obtained outtakes from a documentary movie about the lawsuit.

A Google spokeswoman said the search company complies with valid legal requests, although it will try to narrow any requests that the company considers too broad.

Microsoft declined to comment for this story, and Yahoo did not return calls seeking comment.

"This subpoena is a really good example of why rules need to be put in place to protect our private and sensitive digital information," said Aden Fine, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU who worked with Heller.